Category Archives: Stories from my life

I grew up in a home where the Bible was read every day and we attended the Anglican Church every Sunday. I became a member of that church when I was 11; a few years later I became an altar boy and continued faithfully until I moved away from home to attend university.

There was a time when God seemed very near, yet never did it seem like a connection was made. After I left home, I lost connection with the church and with the Bible. It seemed to me that most churches talked a lot about God, but followed a path that didn’t have much to do with God. The Bible was suspect, too. Perhaps some of it was inspired by God, but it seemed to contradict itself, most of it must be the opinions of those who wrote it.

When I was 24, I borrowed a well-worn Bible from my parents and began reading it again to try and sort out what was really the Word of God and what was man-made additions. After several years I knew that was an impossible task. This book, written by 40 different people over a period of 1,500 years, was only one book. Every part of the Bible was connected to every other part. It was either the Word of God from beginning to end, or entirely a man-made fraud.

The second option seemed less and less tenable as I saw how the Bible explained itself as I read the whole thing. The so-called contradictions disappeared as I began to discern a purpose in them and see how God had revealed Himself step by step to recalcitrant mankind.

Then came the day in 1970 when I was reading the Bible and God pointed His finger directly at me and told me I was a sinner. And I knew it was true. On my knees I admitted to God that all that had gone wrong in my life was my fault and no one else’s. That was the point where my relationship with God began.

That relationship has grown over the years. I have read the Bible through many times, in both French and English. I don’t follow any Bible reading plan that leads me skipping hither and yon through the pages of the Bible. It is only meaningful when I read a book of the Bible through and get the whole picture.

From time to time God still points His finger at me and tells me “You’ve been struggling with that temptation, that bad attitude, or that unwillingness, for long enough. It’s time to repent of it, to clean house.” And He gives the grace to do it. I am constantly amazed at His patience, with the people of Bible times and with me.

The purpose of daily reading and meditating on the Word of God is not to learn about God, or to learn how to please God. Our motivation for opening the Bible must be to meet with God, to deepen our acquaintance with Him whose actions and purposes appear on every page, who inspired those 40 men over a millennium and a half to write the things that are in the book. We will learn about God and about how to live a life that is pleasing to Him, but that has to be a result of first learning to know Him in a personal way. The teachings of the Bible will not stick if we do not know the Author.

Thank you to all those who kept checking this blog over the past two weeks, looking for some sign of life. I did give some small signs that I was sill around, but not as much as I wished to do.

In the beginning I was bogged down with fiscal year end catch up work for my bookkeeping clients. Then I was hit by a cold and sinus ailment. It wasn’t so bad, but it seems that one loses enthusiasm for doing all he wants to do when breathing becomes even a little more difficult.

I am feeling much better now and back to daily sessions on my Needak rebounder, identical to the one shown at the left. (But I don’t look quite like the gentleman in the photo.)

This is the best investment I have ever made in fitness equipment. I have been using it for two years now and my stamina has increased, my abdominal muscles have strengthened, my balance has improved and I have lost 24 pounds. I think that increased blood flow has had good effects on my thinking, too, but the evaluation of that may vary depending on whom you ask.

The photo is copyright, I hope Needak will forgive me for using it.

Meanwhile, Chris has been having her own headaches helping someone in England edit a manuscript and prepare it for for publication. I believe that she is almost to the point of having it ready to publish as a paperback and as an e-book on Amazon. But it’s been a long hard slog. She has learned a lot about publishing via kdp (Kindle Direct Publishing) and a whole lot more about all the corollaries to Murphy’s Law.

The book is a Christian allegory based on a dream this man had. We’ll let you know more when it is available (hopefully the beginning of next week).

We took a trip yesterday to visit my cousin Paul We being my wife and I plus our daughter and her husband. Somehow Michelle and Ken have never met Paul, although he and his wife live only two and a half hours away.

Maybe it’s because we older cousins mostly meet and visit at funerals. Our last uncle passed away at the beginning of the month, at the age of 95. I guess his children have had very little contact with the extended family and didn’t know how many nephews and nieces would want to say their good-byes at a funeral. So they didn’t have a funeral.

My wife suggested a couple weeks ago that we should take that day we would have spent going to a funeral in Alberta and go visit cousin Paul and his wife instead. Ken & Michelle were interested, so yesterday was the day.

Paul and Vivian have lived on their farm in the South Saskatchewan River valley for forty years. They had a herd of registered Simmental cattle grazing on the hills and raised chemical free hay on irrigated land in the valley. Some years ago they cut back on the farming operation and began to operate a guest ranch. Since they live beside the river and Paul had never used pesticides or herbicides on his land they have an amazing variety of bird life that appealed to nature lovers.

Now they have sold most of their land and quit the guest ranch business. But Paul hasn’t quite got farming out of his blood yet. He has built up a small herd of registered Texas Longhorn cattle and has a few Appaloosa horses.

Paul is 77, a year older than me, and has accumulated a lifetime of stories. I’ll just repeat one I heard for the first time yesterday. One day when Paul was 11 or 12 his best friend, a peace-loving boy, came to school with a full package of chewing gum in his pocket and proceeded to give sticks away to the other boys. When it was all gone, one more boy came around the corner of the school and asked for a stick. When he was told there was no more he punched Pal’s friend in the mouth, splitting his lip and knocking him to the ground. Paul helped him get up and then started out to catch up with the attacker and teach him a lesson. His friend caught him by the arm and said “You’ll not get into a fight on my behalf.” According to Paul, his friend maintained that peace-loving attitude all his life.

I remember a story my mother told years ago about Paul’s parents. Uncle Hank, my mother’s oldest brother, had always admired his uncle’s farm and yearned to have a farm just like it. His uncle was a very good farmer and his prosperity was evident in the impressive and well maintained buildings on his yard. However, he wasn’t so wise when it came to investing his extra cash, and lost large sums of money on the stock market.

One day uncle Hank came home and excitedly told his wife, “I just heard that the bank has foreclosed on uncle Jake’s farm. I’m going to get cleaned up and go to the bank and swing a deal to buy that farm.” His wife said, “If you do that, everybody is going to say that you took advantage of your uncle when he was down.” Uncle Hank’s dream of owning that farm he had always envied ended right there.

I wasn’t seeing quite as clearly as I thought I should, but it was difficult to discern just what the problem was. My glasses, perhaps? At the end of last week, when part of a line of text would drop down on the line below, I knew what was happening. Macular degeneration had come again to my left eye.

I have received many treatments for this problem over the past 11 years. I had seen the eye specialist six weeks earlier and all was stable at that point, but now it was changing again. What happens is that tiny capillaries develop behind the macula, the central part of the retina, and cause it to bulge, distorting vision. T This can lead to permanent vision loss and blindness. At least to the point where I would no longer been able to drive a car, read or use a computer.

I called Saskatoon Retina Consultants Monday morning and a day later I was there to have tests done once again, including a scan of the back of the eye. The doctor looked at the results and saw just the tiniest beginning of swelling. In a few minutes he had injected Lucentis into the eye and I was able to go home, with my wife doing the driving.

Lucentis acts to dry up those tiny capillaries, it has to be placed as close to the action as possible so as to be effective where it is needed and not to affect capillaries elsewhere in the body. Thus it is injected by needle directly into the eye. Sounds gruesome, but the doctor is smooth and quick and the eye feels no more effects by the next day.

This morning my vision was more distorted than it had been yesterday morning, but now by evening I can tell that the medicine is working, the swelling in the macula must be going down as lines of type stay more or less straight. By tomorrow I expect to be able to put in a day’s work of bookkeeping. I will need two more injections, at one month intervals, to maintain the effect. I have had 12 or 15 needles in each eye over the past years and they are the reason I am still able to function. It was eight years since the last episode in my left eye.

It’s wonderful that there is a treatment for macular degeneration. It would be better to avoid having it if possible. Here are some tips for doing that:

When we lived in Ontario we often visited the farmers markets in and around Kitchener-Waterloo (there were three). Then we moved to Montréal and found markets that were even more wonderful, especially the Marché Jean-Talon. Now we are back in Saskatchewan and like to visit the Saskatoon Farmers Market; except we live out of the city and it’s only open three days a week.

Online markets have become a big business in recent years, ebay being the leader. In these online markets, like all markets, we are dealing with individual vendors, not the market itself. Most are trustworthy, but buyers need a touch of skepticism when eyeing the bargains offered.

I overruled my skeptical nature on a recent purchase. A vendor was offering WordPerfect X9 at a ridiculously low price. I was suspicious, but the vendor’s description assured that it was the full version. I have bought software at bargain prices through ebay before and been satisfied. So I bit. Dumb move.

What I got was a link to download the software,which was indeed the full version. But no serial number was given or available. So what I have is a 30 day trial version that I could have obtained free of charge from the Corel website. Upon complaining to ebay I found that their guarantee does not extend to downloaded software. I wish the exceptions to their guarantee were displayed for all to see on their website.

So I’m left holding the bag, which will soon be empty when the 30 day trial period expires. I think I’ve learned the lesson, and it really didn’t cost that much. But I still want WordPerfect X9.

We can choose our friends, but we can’t choose our family. We can conceal things about our past from our friends, but our family knows the real story. And we know theirs.

My cousin Ted was 80 on Thursday. Friday evening a few of us got together to celibrate and share memories. Ted’s next older brother, Dennis, was there too. Ted is 3½ years older than I am, Dennis 4½. That was huge 70 years ago, it doesn’t matter anymore.

Their Dad was a brother to my Dad, their Mom a sister to mine.There are differences between us, but they are small; our DNA must be pretty much identical. Ted and I both have trouble with respiratory allergies and with exczema, that seems to run in the family.

Our families always did a lot of visiting back and forth when we were young. Today all three of us are church-going Bible-believing people. It wasn’t always that way and we know things about each other’s history that we don’t talk about anymore. There are some differences in the way we understand the Bible and Christian life, but our experience of the transforming power of Jesus’ love draws us together.

Our daughter and her family were part of the gathering Friday evening. She talked about growing up in an Ontario congegation where all her friends had cousins living close by. Michelle could say that she also had cousins, but they were back in Saskatchewan. I was an only child, my wife was raised apart from her siblings and we have never been all that close to them and their children. Michelle calls Ted and Dennis her uncles and has a good relationship with their children, her cousins. I didn’t realize just how much that has meant to her until she talked about it Friday evening.

Family — I can clearly see my cousin’s faults, but they are much like my own and it seems that we are together in the struggles of life. We know all kinds of embarrassing stories about each other, but we never talk about them — except for some of the really funny ones. I guess we’re just thankful that the Lord has watched o0ver us and brought us safely this far in our lives.

Panda was our number one furry friend for over 15 years. We got her from a street cat rescue program when she was about six months old. She was part of a litter of long haired black cats found in an abandoned car in a back alley. She grew into a magnificent Maine Coon cat and lived with us in our last three homes.

In our first home, she would perch on the back of the couch, part the vertical blinds with her paw to look out on the driveway and watch for our return.

She was the same age as our oldest grandchild and all our grandchildren learned from her that gentleness and kindness were the keys to inspiring trust.

After spending hours at the computer I would turn around and see her on the floor quietly watching me. As soon as I made eye contact she was on her feet leading me to where I kept her brush and comb. A little time spent grooming her made her happy and gave me a needed break. She loved to be vacuumed, the air current through her long hair must have felt good.

The first evening afterwe moved onto this acreage she went outside to explore. When she didn’t come back we went looking for her with flashlights. We went all over the yard, searching and calling her. Finally we gave up and went back to the house. There she was, calmly sitting on the front step, as if to say “Where have you guys been? I’ve been waiting for you.”

I like cats because they are free. They could survive as feral anaimals but choose to make their home with us. They don’t often come when they are called, but when they feel like it they will jump on our lap and purr contentedly.

If I accidentally stepped on Panda’s tail or paw she would give a loud squawk, but that was all. She never believed that I had done it deliberately and it didn’t affect her trust in me. She would calmly sleep through sudden loud noises and commotions in the house, but if a can of salmon was opened she would wake from her sleep, wherever she was, and show up to ask for a share.

Yesterday we took her to the vet and had her put to sleep. Over the past few months she has lost weight until she was just skin and bones. Her blood pressure was high and her kidneys were failing. The vet gave us medicine and at times it seemed to be helping. Finally we had to face the reality that the things we were doing to try and relieve her distress were only causing her more distress. It is a relief to know her suffering is over.

I hope that I have learned something about respect and trust from my relationship with Pand that will transfer to my relationships with people.

Julia was 18 years old when I was born. We were cousins, but she seemed more like an aunt to me. She started teaching in a one room country school in the fall of that year, taught for two years, then married Ed. Their first child, Doreen, was born a year later.

Ed & Julia lived a few miles from us and we often got together. As a young lad I was painfully shy of girls, with the exception of Doreen. I guess we saw each other often enough that I felt no need to run and hide from her. Ed and Julia had four more children, incluidng another girl, Edith, born on my eighth birthday.

I suppose it was Julia’s teacher instincts that led her to encourage my early interest in reading. Most of my little books for beginning readers were gifts from her.

When I was nine, we moved a couple of hours away, but our contact with continued through frequent letters. We eagerly looked forward to the times that we could get together again.

Time went on, I grew up, got married and moved to Eastern Canada. My parents retired and moved into Moose Jaw. My father died, leaving Mom a widow. Ed and Julia retired and moved into Moose Jaw. As Mom grew older, Ed and Julia kept tabs on her and helped her in many ways. They were often the ones who took Mom to the train station or airport for her annual trips to visit us, then picked her up and took her home on her return.

Mom had always had difficulty walking and the time came that she used an electric scooter outside of her home. When Mom was almost 90, Julia phoned to say that she was concerned about Mom living alone. Mom’s eyesight wasn’t very good anymore either, and Julia had seen her crossing the busy street at full throttle on her scooter, and sometimes cars had to stop quickly to let her pass.

Chris and I began to talk about returning to Saskatchewan. We came back for Mom’s 90th birthday and Julia repeated her concerns and we could see for ourselves that the time had come that we would need to take a more active part in caring for my mother. Ed and Julia weren’t able to be as much involved with Mom anymore, as Ed had been diagnosed with cancer.

Five months after Mom’s birthday we were back living in Saskatchewan. We settled in Saskatoon and Mom lived with us for some time, then spent her last year in a nursing home. She was almost 99 when she died.

We saw Ed and Julia occasionally on visits to Moose Jaw. Several times Ed was declared free of cancer, but soon they would find another spot. He had numerous surgeries and treatments and bore it all patiently. We felt in him a readiness for it all to be over and to go and meet his Lord. That happened in 2004, shortly after Julia’s 80th birthday.

Our contacts with Julia since then have not been as frequent as they should have been. She continued living in her own home for a few years, then moved to a suite in a senior’s residence, then to a nursing home and then to another. We have visited her in all those places and often joined the family for birthday celebrations. The last time we saw her was on her birthday in February of 2017. I believe she knew who we were, but doubt that she remembered after we left.

Julia died yesterday at the age of 94. I was going to say that another piece of my life is gone, but that’s not at all true. All the contributions she made to my life in my growing up years and after are still there. Her warmth, her kindness, her care, are part of what shaped me.

During the time I had been away in Toronto my folks had sold the little farm at Craik and bought an older two storey house in Moose Jaw. It wasn’t hard getting used to living in Moose Jaw, it was where I was born, we had family in the city and had made frequent trips there all during my growing up years. Uncle Art and Aunt Katherine, Dad’s brother and Mom’s sister, had moved into the city years ago already. Dad turned 72 in the summer of 1963, his eyesight was getting worse and he could no longer drive, so the move was a sensible one for them.

To get to the nearest Anglican church all my parents had to do was walk out to the back alley, go half a block east and half a block north. It was a distance my mother could easily walk. I never accompanied them to church.

Dad might not have seen well enough to drive, but he could still walk. He got up early in the morning and went for a walk, then took another walk or two later in the day, doing about six miles a day. He couldn’t see to read much anymore; Mom would gladly have read to him, but he could not bring himself to let her do it. That would have been to admit that he was handicapped.

But what was I to do? I was a walker like my Dad and walked all over the city with that question spinning around in my mind. I had lost all my excess weight in Toronto and was down to 60 kilos. I hadn’t done any physical work during those years that would have bulked me up, but I wasn’t weak or malnourished. I think it was just the unending questions about my future that made my head spin. One afternoon I came home from a walk, walked into the living room, blacked out for a moment and fell.

I got right back up on my feet, but Mom was scared. She got me in to see her doctor and he prescribed some little white pills for me. I got the impression that there was some malfunction in my heart and these pills would regulate it.

My cousin Dennis came to my rescue. He needed help on the farm and I was available. The farm was only a few miles out of Moose Jaw; I spent Monday to Saturday with Dennis and Harlene at the farm and Sunday at home with Mom and Dad in Moose Jaw. I helped with the field work and whatever else needed doing around the farm. Occasionally I would babysit Wendy, Jana and Jeffrey, their three young children.

Dennis had a few head of cattle, Harlene kept a few ducks and geese. It was getting dark one evening during harvest when I pulled into the yard with a load of grain to unload into the granary. The geese were not yet shut up for the night and here comes the gander running towards the truck, neck stretched out, wings flapping, honking for all he was worth to save the other geese from this monster. A fully loaded truck does not stop on a dime. Mom was out to visit Harlene and the two of them spent the rest of the evening plucking and eviscerating the would-be hero.

I helped at the farm on occasion during the winter and in spring began putting in long hours in the fields again. Then in late summer I landed a temporary job at the United Grain Growers grain elevator in Moose Jaw.

It was good to be home again, to eat my mother’s cooking, to sleep in my own bed in my own room, to help out around the farm and to visit the old buffalo rubbing stone, my rock of refuge. I was sure that the people in town thought of me as already a failure at the age of eighteen, so I avoided contact with them as much as I could.

After a few weeks of this my father exploded into my room one Sunday morning to angrily demand that I get dressed for church and come with them. He was right, I needed to get out among other people, but his way of forcing the issue did nothing to make me feel any less a failure. However, the rejection I dreaded at church never happened and I slipped back into the familiar rhythm of Anglican worship services.

There was perhaps some solace to my soul in the magnificent words of the Scriptures, prayers and hymns, but I don’t recall much spiritual sustenance in the sermons. The preacher at that time was a young man from England who never really got acclimatized to the prairie way of life. One sermon that I remember was about what an evil game hockey was and how cricket was the proper sport for Christians. He was that much disconnected from reality in rural Saskatchewan. I don’t think anyone ever tried to set him straight, they just politely ignored him.

Gradually I dared to peek out from my protective covering a little bit at a time and found that I suffered no painful consequences. I still went to find the peace and quiet of the old rock, but perhaps the long walks along the ravines did as much for my mental state.

This is long ago, I have repressed these memories for years and many things are no longer clear to me. I believe it was at this time that I worked for a few days helping to pour the foundation for a new high school. It has come back to me that the incident of my father burning himself and me taking over his farm duties and janitorial duties at the hospital occurred during this period.

I must have been home at Craik for almost two years. In the summer of 1962 I was off to Toronto again, this time to attend DeVry Technical Institute to learn electronics. Not that I was terribly interested in learning electronics, but it was a field that offered many job opportunities and once again my parents were ready to pay my way, so off I went.

Copyright notice

All the material posted here is written by me, Bob Goodnough, unless specifically attributed to another author, and is copyright. Feel free to re-blog any post but please include my name as author and this blog as the source.